


Lost and Found

by Starfurious



Series: Eyes as Deep as Space [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Prequel, Ro Laren (mentioned), loving an alien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-08 08:01:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13453914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starfurious/pseuds/Starfurious
Summary: Ro Laren defecting causes more turmoil than she realised, but fortunately Will Riker will always have someone to turn to, even when he doesn't want counselling. A prequel of sorts to "Explanations", although you don't need to have read that.





	1. Chapter 1

Will Riker had a restless soul. If he was honest with himself, he'd known that long before it had been pointed out to him, in what felt like another lifetime, before he had joined the Enterprise. At the time, though, that softly accented observation, murmured in the early hours of the morning by lips still bruised from his kisses, had seemed like a revelation. He remembered affectionate black eyes dancing with the first rays of reflected sunlight watching him dress, not quite laughing at his attempt to leave their bed without waking her.

The truth of the words, and the image of her, leaning back against the pillows as she spoke, dark curls tumbling over pale shoulders, and her cheeks pink from sleep, had stayed with him ever since. He didn't think he'd seen anything so profoundly beautiful as her teasing smile when she told him that it was as if the thoughts running through his head all night had reached escape velocity, and needed a physical outlet. He'd just grinned, and held out a hand to her, and so she'd left the tumbled sheets and walked him to the open entryway of their lakeside house. She had kissed him there, uncaring of her nudity or that they might be seen by anyone taking an early morning stroll along the crystal green sands, and sent him out to walk until he found some peace.

What she had said then was as true now as it had been then. So, when his report was written, and his face was his own again, he'd found himself wandering through the most deserted parts of the ship, trying to walk past what troubled him.

He thought he knew why Ro had made the choice she had; after listening to the group she had been sent to infiltrate, learning about them, and earning their acceptance, why to someone who had missed the fight for their own world it had seemed like the only moral choice. But knowing something and feeling it were two different things.

Ro had turned her back so easily; on them, and the Federation, and the values that she had sworn to uphold. These were things that he had been ready to give his life for over, and over again, but she had thrown it all away, and the only regret she'd had was letting down a single man. Like the rest meant nothing to her. She had no faith in them to find a solution, so she had betrayed their faith in her. Because once again Lieutenant Ro Laren knew better and she had just done what she wanted. Without caring about anything except the short term gratification of her desires and conscience. Again. And like every other time she had done it, she had hurt more than just herself.

To make matters worse, this time there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing to learn, nothing to teach, or try to repair on either side. She was simply, irrevocably, gone. Just like Tom. 

And he? He didn't know where he was; only that he was angry, and lost. Because after everything they'd been through over the last few years this betrayal felt personal, and because he'd let his feelings, and his feet, tow him through the ship without paying any attention to where he was going.

So now he was stuck in some endless grey corridor where someone had had the brilliant idea to reduce the lighting to simulate night time, on deck something, section who the hell knows. He was angry, frustrated, and too damned stubborn to ask the computer where he had ended up. And, of course, there was no one else around, because when he had started walking he hadn't wanted to see anyone, and sometimes he was too intuitive for his own good! Great.

Shoving one hand back through his thick brown hair, he paced a few meters, swung around, took a couple of distressed steps back the way he had come, then finally, painfully, lost control of what he was feeling. Something loud and unintelligibly furious ripped from his throat, only split seconds before his fist struck the bulkhead with a force of rage he hadn't been willing to admit to.

Pain ricocheted back along his forearm, distracting him from his conscious thought. It freed him to just feel and in the space his reason left behind he became aware of something small and hidden. It was so quiet and gentle, this part of him that wasn't really him at all, and so far outside the normal human experience that he didn't usually notice it was there, except for times like this when he was distracted from himself, and the soft strength of it could overcome the force of his cluttered logic. 

He realised, as he had done at odd moments over the last decade, that he was never truly alone. There, soft, and golden-warm, wrapped protectively around his sense of self, was that same loving tolerance and affection he always found in Deanna's deep eyes when he allowed himself to look for long enough. The feeling tightened comfortingly, and seemed to smile at him.

"Come to me, Imzadi," she whispered into his mind, "let me help you."

"I don't know where I am," he said, embarrassed both from the fact of the statement, and because he was now speaking aloud in an empty corridor.

The feeling of a smile deepened. Heat and gentle amusement wrapped the gold of her presence in his mind in shimmering silver. "Then I will guide you," she thought, "just concentrate on your sense of me, and let it pull you here,"

"Thanks." He nodded, even though he knew she couldn't see it, and did as she asked. 

Taking a deep, cleansing breath, he shut out everything except her, trusting the thread that had woven their minds and fates together so long ago to lead him blindly through the grey maze of the lower decks until he found himself in the one place he always longed to be when he lost his way. Like Theseus following Ariadne's yarn through the labyrinth.

"Hopefully there is no monster hunting you tonight, Imzadi" her voice came across the link between them, falling into his mid as easily as the image of his strange thought had into hers.

"I think that depends on if you sent Worf out to get me" he said, chuckling into empty space despite himself.

"Behave!" she scolded. "And concentrate. I don't want to drop you out of an airlock by mistake!" But there was no strength to her rebuke, and her laughter tinkled like crystal along the silver filaments of her amusement.

"What about on purpose?"

The silver flared, bright and joyful "Perhaps," she thought "Now, Ssshh."

Somehow he made it, quiet and unseeing, into a turbolift and along their deck without ever noticing that he had moved. He remembered only calm purpose and her familiar warmth from his journey, but when he stopped, and felt her recede from his waking mind into the back of his subconscious, he was outside her quarters.

The door hissed open, but she didn't say anything as she stood in front of him, simply took both his hands in hers, and drew him inside. Just as quietly he leaned forward, and kissed her.

"Imzadi." The word echoed between their souls, as loud as it was silent.


	2. Chapter 2

His lips brushed her forehead, then her cheek,where they tasted salt of the tears he knew were really his, before returning to her mouth. He kissed her deeper than before, almost desperate in the way his tongue stroked over soft flesh and pushed inside on a welcoming sigh. She opened beneath him and he devoured her, that bright forgotten heat flaring between them on her acceptance, and for a few blissful seconds everything else melted away in its warmth. Minds and mouths tangled together. A swirl of burning need and heady moist physicality ripped through the barriers built by their lives until they couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Even breathing was forgotten as they overwhelmed each other. Because this was them; this peace and chaos of belonging, and it would never leave.

After what felt like an eternity and a fraction of an instant of contact all at once, he was forced to pull back gasping for air, but only far enough to look into her eyes. He stared, lost but somehow also found in their depths, and thought how strange it was that eyes so dark could hold so much light. Like the wonders of the universe cradled in the blackness of space, he saw the same thing he'd seen when he looked at the stars as a boy. She was his life and his hope, and his great adventure through the universe, but more than any of those, right now, she was his home. 

She smiled, one of her hands reaching up to brush the hair away from his face, “Welcome back, Will Riker,” she said, and he knew that she meant from a much different absence than his time in the shuttle.

“Thanks,” he replied, unable to articulate for how much, but knowing she'd understand.

Then he kissed her again. Because after the last week, this was something that felt right. He could have this, trust this, and she would never betray him. 

One of his hands lost itself in her dark curls while the other slipped around her waist. He pulled her into him leaving a path of tingling fire as his fingers trailed down her silk covered curves to settle on the back of one thigh. Without breaking the kiss, he guided them back until she was pressed up against the cool bulkhead that separated her bedroom from the rest of her quarters. 

The cool duranium was an almost shocking contrast to his hot mouth on her skin when he left hers to suckle on the sensitive skin beneath her ear. She gasped, but she didn't push him away, didn't remind him about duty and responsibility as she had once before. Not even when the hand on her thigh pushed beneath the hem of her nightgown and guided her leg up to hook around his hip did she stop him. Instead her arms wrapped around him, and she canted her hips forward, pushing against him as his hardness rocked against her with the same rhythm as his tongue on her neck. 

“Will,” she breathed, and felt him smile against her skin.

“let me stay,” he whispered hotly into her ear, and bit softy at the lobe.

Her hand stroked up the bow of his spine to squeeze his shoulder affectionately, charmed that even with her consent so clearly implicit he would ask, and turned her head to kiss his cheek. “Yes. Take me to bed, Imzadi.”

He smiled again, deeper this time, and although she couldn't see it, it echoed in her soul. Urgency forgotten for a moment, he lifted her against him, strong arms easily handling her slight form and wrapping her in everything they were together. Years of joy and heat, and understanding that tied them together and meant she would never feel as loved as she did just then, held in his arms. 

“I do love you, you know,” she told him.

“I know.” he carried her to bed, and laid her down, standing back up and just looking at her with his heart shining in his blue eyes. She had changed a little in the ten years since she had been the young woman lying in their soft white sheets in their house on Betazed. Her hair was shorter, and there were the faintest of lines at the corners of her eyes when she laughed now, but she was still impossibly beautiful, all raven curls and midnight eyes against the palest olive skin. Her figure was even more incredible than it had been then, breasts still high and firm, but fuller now, and she had become toned and slender in the place of her girlish slightness. He ached every time he looked at her like this. Because she was capable of so much love, and she was willing to share it with him. And because no matter what else was happening in their lives, he loved her in return.

She rose onto her elbows, head tipped to the side and one silky fine strap falling down her arm as she looked back at him, questioning. “What is it?”

“Are you sure?” he asked

a gentle, seductive smile spread across her face, and she nodded slowly “We need each other, Imzadi. Nothing else matters,”

“Good” he grinned at her, pulled his uniform shirt over his head and came towards her. “Because tonight you're mine.” his weight settled between her legs, and he kissed her again, full of confidence now, as well as desire. 

She opened herself under him. Her eyes closed and her mind reached out for his, pulling him inside herself as he plundered her mouth and felt her empathy shudder. Beneath his flaming spirit and the warmth of his naked skin through her thin cool silk her body and mind melted together. Hands brushed along sensitive skin and she moaned into his mouth as he rose over her, her whole being responding to the feel of him hard against her centre and the rough fabric of his pants on soft inner thighs. 

He caught her wrists and trapped them against the pillows over her head. His mouth released her swelling lips long enough to whisper “Mine” once more across her flushed skin before he arched to take the tender flesh where neck met shoulder between his teeth. Her head tilted to the side, exposing more of her throat to his hungry mouth, trembling in submission as he suckled, marking her as his. 

“Yes,” she hissed, agreeing to his possession for now, even as she flowed into his thoughts and pressed her mind against the heated core of him. 

“God, Deanna!” His free hand hooked around the back of one of her knees, and he felt his musician's calluses stroke against her inhumanly warm skin as if it were his own. He groaned, and she tightened her legs around him as her amused empathic laughter licked at the back of his mind. 

“Problem, Imzadi?” she whispered through his thoughts, rolling her hips under his, and making him grow impossibly harder.

His mouth settled lightly over hers and he grinned, reaching down to free himself from his pants “Something might have come up,” he whispered, and flicked his tongue across her lips, something between heat and mischief caught in his icey eyes. 

She smiled back “Whatever it is, it's no little th-” she started to say, and then stopped as he shifted, letting his weight open her up so he could slip inside. “Gods!”

“Yeah” he gently touched her face, holding himself still and watching for any sign of discomfort as her pelvis widened and she adjusted to his size before pushing all the way into her moist core. “You okay?”

Her hands, freed from his hold, reached around the back of his head, and she kissed him once more, rippling around him and flooding his senses with exactly how okay she was. The hot aching stretch of the moment of his penetration sang through his soul with the shuddering slide of him along her moist walls. She was incredibly, euphorically, full and he was struggling to breathe through the pleasure of it. His.

“Yours” she sighed

And it was all he could do to pull back and feel it all again. “Imzadi!” he cried out as he thrust, or thought he did, and their minds coiled tighter. Passion blazed between them like blinding white fire. Everything was overcome for a few blissful moments by the force of her pleasure pouring through his fragile human mind. Then he fell, released, and tumbled into her waiting arms.

“Imzadi,” she whispered, and rolled them both to their sides, knowing he wouldn't have the energy left to do it himself after all he had given her. She brushed that wayward lock of hair out of his eyes, and tenderly kissed his brow before settling down to watch him sleep. He would be whole again when he woke.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a thing that I didn't think I could write, and I ended up doing half of it on a bus, of all places! 
> 
> I'd be interested to hear how people think I did with Riker, as he was my major stumbling block, what with all his outwardly simple, inwardly complex all-american optimism, and my living-in-a-barrel levels of cynicism! I tried to get him back to cheerful and caring by the end, but I'm not sure it worked out exactly as planned...
> 
> All spelling and grammatical errors are mine (and they are just about the only things I own in this story!).


End file.
